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BT4 R1 hard drive install - "prepare partitions" window is blank

Hello everyone,

I am trying to dual boot Windows 7 64 bit with BT4 R1. When I run install.sh, I get to the "Prepare partitions" window, and it is completely blank. Nothing is there at all. I opened up a terminal and ran fdisk -l, but that returned absolutely nothing too.

Would anyone happen to know why my hard drive is not being recognized at all? Here is my hard drive:

Re: BT4 R1 hard drive install - "prepare partitions" window is blank

Thank you for your suggestion! My hard drive already has a working copy of Windows 7 64 bit, so I believe the hard drive is ok. I am using that right now actually I am also able to free up 100 GB for a BT4 R1 partition using the Windows 7 Disk Management tool, so I don't think the problem has to do with me not being able to partition the hard drive.

I tried the BT4 R1 CD in my laptop, and I was able to see the partitions there and I could have installed it if I wanted to, but I want it on my desktop, which is where I'm having this problem. Do you have any other suggestions? Could it have something to do with where the jumper is on my hard drive, or maybe a BIOS setting? Thanks!

Re: BT4 R1 hard drive install - "prepare partitions" window is blank

...also possible that fdisk wasn't looking at the proper device? long shot here, since you have a functional OS already, but try determining where your hard drive is enumerated and call it specifically with fdisk (# fdisk /dev/sda or what-not). Perhaps you could then create a linux partition out of your unpartitioned space so that BT installer will see it... I don't think this will solve your problem, as the BT installer didn't see ANYTHING... but it's a shot.

also, does the HD appear when you try other live CDs? Ubuntu, SuSE, even the GParted disc I mentioned above... what do they show (if anything)? Perhaps you could use one of them to partition the space so that BT will see it?

I'm actually just shooting in the dark here. I think archangel has the rub of it, to be honest. something's squirrely.

Re: BT4 R1 hard drive install - "prepare partitions" window is blank

Since it's SATA maybe BT doesn't recognize it (missing drivers for the sata controller or something).
Have you tried putting the disk in Legacy/IDE mode in the BIOS?
WARNING: Doing so will most likely screw up you Windows install, or atleast not boot it while in this mode.

"The difference between RAID1 and RAID0 is that the zero stands for how many files you're gonna have after a harddisk failure."

Re: BT4 R1 hard drive install - "prepare partitions" window is blank

Originally Posted by voidnecron

Since it's SATA maybe BT doesn't recognize it (missing drivers for the sata controller or something).
Have you tried putting the disk in Legacy/IDE mode in the BIOS?
WARNING: Doing so will most likely screw up you Windows install, or atleast not boot it while in this mode.

i have same problem before and i change the Bios setting and i installed BT 4 R1 and i change it back again so everything work fine.

Re: BT4 R1 hard drive install - "prepare partitions" window is blank

I have a similar installation problem in which it hangs at the partitioning part. Tried switching from AHCI to IDE and started the installation again, but the same problem still occurs, so I'm a little stumped too.

Try (re)moving jumpers and or changing the bios settings and let us know.

First of all thank you everyone for your replies! I was trying Archanel's ideas first, and here's what happened.

I am using a SATA hard drive, and I noticed I don't have any jumpers. Then I checked my BIOS settings, and it was on IDE. I changed it to AHCI and made sure Windows still worked with that, and it did. Then I booted up my Backtrack 4 R1 live CD and still NO hard drives were found. I ran the install script a couple of times and it crashed after maybe the 4th time. Here is the error message I got:

Code:

We're sorry; the installer crashed. Please file a new bug report at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+filebug (do not attach your details to any existing bug) and a developer will attend to the problem as soon as possible. To help the developers understand what went wrong, include the following detail in your bug report, and attach the files /var/log/syslog and /var/log/partman:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/zoommap.py", line 196, in timeout
self.blink()
File "/usr/lib/ubiquity/ubiquity/zoommap.py", line 391, in blink
cr = self.window.cairo_create()
Error: NULL pointer

This happened twice. I think I am going to get the latest Ubuntu like someone mentioned and see if it will see my hard drive while I still try some other things to get this to work. I may install Ubuntu too just to see if maybe Backtrack will pick up that partition because it already has Linux on it, just like someone else already mentioned too

If anyone else has any other suggestions, I would be really thankful, and thanks to everyone who has already written back!

Hey everyone,

I know it has been a while, but I thought I should let you all know what I did to get around this problem. After a lot of searching on the internet, I believe that the drivers for my hard drive weren't there.

My solution:

I installed Backtrack4 R1 on a virtual machine using VirtualBox. Then after installing the VirtualBox tools, everything worked well! Everything works perfectly and I am happy =)

If any of you have any questions, feel free to ask me. I would love to help!